‘British expats, he claimed, were refusing to fill out evacuation forms provided by the British government “just in case it somehow turns into a tax form instead”.’
No notes.
as.ft.com/r/65cf2b43-6...
‘British expats, he claimed, were refusing to fill out evacuation forms provided by the British government “just in case it somehow turns into a tax form instead”.’
No notes.
as.ft.com/r/65cf2b43-6...
It would rightly be regarded as insane to use a forecast like this to plan for your imminent retirement. And yet the office for budget responsibility is directly influencing fiscal policy on exactly this basis.
04.03.2026 13:39 — 👍 46 🔁 13 💬 4 📌 1
A black and white cat with yellow eyes, mouth open and one paw raised toward the camera
Dodge this! :3
04.03.2026 13:44 — 👍 4704 🔁 943 💬 55 📌 5Every day I am filled with hate because my heart overflows with my love of the computer. aftermath.site/ram-prices-h...
19.02.2026 19:14 — 👍 4004 🔁 1272 💬 36 📌 62
Utterly chilling insight into how Keir Starmer's team has been operating from the beginning. As others have been pointing out for years, the Labour Party and the country have been taken for a ride. There was a coup within the party, using a host of dirty tricks.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
I wouldn’t put it past our political class to draw the conclusion that, in the absence of an economy that creates graduate jobs, we will just have to cut back on graduates.
20.02.2026 08:24 — 👍 111 🔁 24 💬 3 📌 1
Clive Lewis MP: This deal with Palantir stinks. It stank before Peter Mandelson was involved, and it stank when those now on the Opposition Benches initiated the NHS and defence contracts. Peter Thiel is an oligarch who despises democracy... Even the Swiss army has rejected Palantir...
#R4Today
"Switzerland’s military has terminated its contract with Palantir… following a security audit… concluded that U.S. intelligence agencies could potentially access sensitive Swiss defense data… significant reputational warning for the data analytics firm"
www.newscase.com/palantirs-sw...
#R4Today
I have been a little surprised that this shoe hadn't dropped already. The more that businesses become seen as extensions of a particular government's interests, the less that many other governments will want to have any relationship to them. See also the CapGemini brouhaha.
11.02.2026 13:06 — 👍 441 🔁 152 💬 12 📌 5
Bluesky in a nutshell.
Some context: BLS released its jobs numbers today, which were better than expected, and resistance libs would rather stay mad/conspiratorial than listen to actual on-the-ground experts that the data is still reliable.
This is an extraordinary interview in which the former FCDO perm sec basically tells No 10 not to appoint Antonia Romeo to be cab sec, and that they should talk to him about her record.
11.02.2026 20:42 — 👍 208 🔁 92 💬 33 📌 11
a society losing the plot in real time
10.02.2026 21:11 — 👍 3905 🔁 690 💬 147 📌 276There's no reason to accept this as normal, though. Much of Starmer and Labour's unpopularity is not misfortune but his own doing. Mandelson was a choice. Consistently pursuing policy positions designed to appeal to people who will not vote for you - and alienating core supporters - is a choice.
06.02.2026 11:48 — 👍 936 🔁 204 💬 32 📌 14Per @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk: 'Reform has gobbled up a large chunk of the right-leaning youth, this is reallocation within an already shrinking bloc [...] rather than a far-right surge, the youth vote in the UK shows a remarkable opposite trend: a surge of progressive voting, including among young men'
07.02.2026 14:05 — 👍 38 🔁 21 💬 6 📌 0This is the report I spoke of on #bbcaq just now - ministers tried to suppress it, were finally forced to release it after an FoI, but shamefully only published a redacted version. The first duty of Govt is to protect its citizens - that starts with being honest with us about scale of threat we face
06.02.2026 21:33 — 👍 450 🔁 223 💬 10 📌 3
🚨 This evening, a notice was circulated from representatives of Peter Mandelson, via press regulator IPSO and the Press Association news wire, to all media across the UK
We believe it is strongly in the public interest to publish this memo. This is it in full 👇
today’s Times v today’s FT
06.02.2026 17:23 — 👍 105 🔁 25 💬 18 📌 2
“Staffer declared military invasion in error.”
“Staffer fired cabinet member in error.”
This is the government they created — and it highlights why the government they created is so exceptionally dangerous to national security. The systems and bureaucracy, it turns out, exist for a reason.
So, first of all, of course it was Trump.
But even if they were telling the truth, "We give staffers who post videos of the Obamas as apes access to the agenda-setting, decree-sending, market-moving account of the president of the United States" is not the exculpatory statement they think it is.
This operation can do two things: lie, sometimes to itself, sometimes to other people (2020, 2024) or lose (2015). Perhaps it is now learning a third: both!
06.02.2026 16:30 — 👍 235 🔁 31 💬 17 📌 0
Abstract Al assistance produces significant productivity gains across professional domains, particularly for novice workers. Yet how this assistance affects the development of skills required to effectively supervise AI remains unclear. Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition in the process. We conduct randomized experiments to study how developers gained mastery of a new asynchronous programming library with and without the assistance of Al. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average. Participants who fully delegated coding tasks showed some productivity improvements, but at the cost of learning the library. We identify six distinct AI interaction patterns, three of which involve cognitive engagement and preserve learning outcomes even when participants receive AI assistance. Our findings suggest that Al-enhanced productivity is not a shortcut to competence and AI assistance should be carefully adopted into workflows to preserve skill formation - particularly in safety-critical domains.
‘Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition… We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average.’
arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
New research!
Austerity and the labour market in the UK.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Headline result: austerity reduced wages, increased employment rates, and contributed to weak productivity.
1/n
Person: say, i am alive. Computer: I am alive. Person: oh my god.
01.02.2026 23:48 — 👍 23424 🔁 5151 💬 85 📌 140
Epstein to Thiel: “as I said in your office…finding things on their way to collapse was much easier than finding the next bargain.” Primitive accumulation smoking gun open.substack.com/pub/undiplom...
02.02.2026 22:24 — 👍 10 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
I’m sorry but what did libertarians think that the anonymous money laundering racism coin that you could only functionally use for illicit activity was doing other than this, exactly
02.02.2026 19:24 — 👍 11621 🔁 3735 💬 146 📌 183
on january 7, 2015, a shitcoin sleezebag named austin hill wrote to jeffrey epstein asking for a meeting. in a PS, he explains that me might be bringing an anarchist he calls 'bitcoin belle' who camped out in occupy wall street
www.justice.gov/epstein/file...
“a party that confuses access with virtue launders power for money” - @theguardian.com view www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
02.02.2026 20:36 — 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
We set out to determine how many images of women and girls Grok created during its nudifying spree. What we found was “industrial-scale abuse,” experts said. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/t...
22.01.2026 14:56 — 👍 3421 🔁 1453 💬 13 📌 172While there is so much that is disturbing about this case study in the destruction of academic freedom, one high point is the refusal of the targeted professor to submit
07.01.2026 11:32 — 👍 164 🔁 60 💬 3 📌 3
As flagged by @fullfact.org, there's an ENTIRELY AI-GENERATED video of a fake UK politician in the House of Commons doing the rounds on TikTok
It has more than 5 million views
While the original video is flagged as AI, it has been reposted by many other accounts (where it is not labelled as AI)